March 20th 2011

6:39 am. Back at the apt.

There is certain kind of nights in New York. Nights when the city kicks your ass so badly, that your own bed seems like a distant paradise. These are usually very cold nights, late trains nights, nights when you have nowhere to go to, and you know you have to stay up for hours, cause you have just missed your last train home. The nights when you realize that The City that never sleeps, is another myth. It does. Well, kind of. Between 3am and 5am almost everything is closed. The city slows down for just a while. You can see yellow cabs speeding through avenues, cause it’s the only time out of 24 hours when they actually can. You notice single lights in the skyscrapers windows, that are still on. You never see the stars though. You can hear and feel subway running right underneath your feet. Familiar sound, that will bring you Downtown. On your way to the next whiskey bar, where you’ll be safe form cold, for another couple of hours. The nights between crying of tiredness and looking for adventures. Random places, random people. Nights when you almost scream out of desperation. You wander around, you look, you wait. Cold, cold nights when you wish you would have stayed home but you didn’t and now you’re waiting in the line for a cheeseburger just to kill some time.

Nights that end up with early morning, when you get to bed and even though you don’t know if to say goodnight or good morning, you still can’t sleep. Moon tonight got 14 % bigger. Not 15 not 13,5  - 14 . I don’t know how they measured that, but yes, it does seem bigger.

K.

I'm back

I’m back. Almost like Arnold but, no, not really.

For the last months I haven’t actually been in a New York state of mind. My days were blessed with routine and lack of doubt. I do blame cold for this.

When I first came to NY I was told that the winter here is short (two months) and warm (-10 degrees Celsius) which for European standards seemed like a spring breeze. It didn’t quite work out this way. First the Blizzards…blizzard here equals more or less a week, of not being able to leave the house. Unless you want to end up a as snowman (snow woman?) within couple of seconds. Then it got cold, wet, humid, awful cold.

When most of my friends in Europe celebrated first day of spring I was sitting forth month in a row under the blanket with my feet over a radiator. It was snowing. I have worn out my winter boots already and they licked.

I hate cold. I hate cold almost as much as I hate math. Well maybe not as much but close. When somebody asks me to go out and play in the snow they could have just asked me “hey do you want to do some fractions and then compare the results?” I have absolutely no tolerance for it, and I find it as Carrie Bradshaw finds botox – “painful and unnecessary”. When I moan about cold ( and I do it all the time) I often hear “but you’re European!” “yeah, so ?” I have a friend who is Puerto Rican and he despise the summer, cause he hates to sweat. So?

Apparently Eastern Europe is boiling in the same pot as Siberia. Wearing huge fur hats and drinking vodka. Do even Russians wear those hats anymore?

It seems like short and warm New York’s winter is like American myth itself – great marketing.

Anyway, I’m back, and I’ll keep you posted with news from The Country of Bullshit and Whatever.

K.